History

Before Europeans arrived, Pacifica was home to two significant Ohlone villages: Pruristac, on San Pedro Creek near today’s Adobe Drive, and Timigtac, on Calera Creek in the Rockaway Beach neighborhood [1]. They were villages of the Aramai band of the Ramaytush Ohlone, and the only Ohlone villages between Montara Mountain and the Golden Gate [5]. A shell midden at Mori Point shows that people lived there long before the Spanish [4].

In the autumn of 1769 the overland expedition led by Gaspar de Portolá was looking for Monterey Bay and had passed it without knowing. On October 31 the expedition’s engineer, Miguel Costansó, wrote that the party descended to a camp near a stream and marsh not far from the beach, in a hollow of high hills [3]. The expedition camped near the site of the later Sánchez Adobe from October 31 to November 3 [2]. On November 4 the party climbed the range to the northeast and Costansó described seeing “the magnificent estuary” of San Francisco Bay [3]. It was the oldest European sighting of the bay: earlier sea captains Cabrillo and Vizcaíno had missed it because fog so often hid the Golden Gate [1]. The site of the sighting, on Sweeney Ridge, is now marked as the San Francisco Bay Discovery Site [11].

In 1786 Mission Dolores set up a farming outpost, San Pedro y San Pablo Asistencia, in the San Pedro Valley. It had a granary, a chapel and four other rooms around a plaza [2]. The farming was abandoned four years later after a steep decline in the Native American population, and the outpost then lived on cattle ranching [2]. In 1782 and 1783 many people of Pruristac had already been relocated to Mission Dolores [2].

After Mexican independence the land became Rancho San Pedro, granted in 1839 to Francisco Sánchez, commandante of the San Francisco Presidio [1]. He built an adobe in the valley between 1842 and 1846, probably reusing bricks from the outpost [2]. The adobe is now a National Register site and a county house museum [2]. Edward Kirkpatrick bought the property in 1871 and enlarged the house to twenty rooms [2].

From 1776 the Spanish used Ohlone labor to cut limestone at the Rockaway Quarry for the Presidio and the missions [5]. After the 1906 earthquake the quarry reopened in 1907, and its stone served as ballast for the Ocean Shore Railroad and as building material to rebuild San Francisco [5]. The railroad, meant to link San Francisco to Santa Cruz, ran only as two separate pieces between 1905 and 1920 and never closed the gap [6]. Several of Pacifica’s future neighborhoods began as its stops [1], and its motto was “It reaches the Beaches!” [7].

During Prohibition the coast was a rum-runners’ landing. In 1923 federal agents seized 24,000 cases of whiskey from a farm at Mori Point, and the Mori Point Inn and the Sánchez Adobe both served as speakeasies [4] [2]. In 1917 the widow of the lawyer George Sharp had left the Sharp Park land to San Francisco for use as a public park [8]. Alister MacKenzie’s golf course there opened in 1932 [8].

From 1942 to 1946 the area around Sharp Park held a detention station run by the immigration service for Japanese Americans, Japanese nationals and other people the government called foreign enemies [1] [8]. In the late 1930s and 1940s the Army fortified the ridges above the town for the defense of San Francisco Bay, including Milagra Ridge, which later held a Nike missile site [15]. Observation bunkers also stood at Devil’s Slide [10].

Pacifica incorporated in 1957, a recent date by San Mateo County standards. It was the union of nine unincorporated communities: Fairmont, Westview, Pacific Manor, Sharp Park, Fairway Park, Vallemar, Rockaway Beach, Linda Mar and Pedro Point [1]. Residents chose the name Pacifica by vote; Coastside was the runner-up [1]. Jean Fassler was elected the first mayor and was one of the first women mayors in California [12]. The city seal of 1960 took its cue from Ralph Stackpole’s “Pacifica” statue made for the 1939 world’s fair on Treasure Island [1].

Many of Pacifica’s open spaces were won back by residents. Voters blocked development of the Milagra Ridge slopes in 1995 [15], and conservation groups bought Mori Point at auction in 2000 for $3.3 million and gave it to the federal government in 2002 [4]. Between 1989 and 2005 Pacifica State Beach was restored, including the 2002 removal of two oceanside homes, an early use of managed retreat [9]. Voters rejected plans to develop the closed Rockaway Quarry in 2005 and 2016 [5]. In 2013 the Tom Lantos Tunnels took Highway 1 behind the landslide-prone cliffs of Devil’s Slide, and the old road became a trail in 2014 [10].

Pacifica had 38,640 residents at the 2020 census [1]. People come for beginner surf at Linda Mar, fishing from the pier, trails on Sweeney Ridge and Mori Point, and the beachfront Taco Bell [1] [9]. The Pacifica Historical Society runs the Coastside Museum and keeps the town’s stories [7]. The Pacifica Pier has been closed since June 2026 while the city seeks funding for repairs [14].

The Portola Expedition of 1769⁠–⁠1770: Diary of Miguel Costanso, Miguel Costanso, edited by Frederick J. Teggart (1911) — public domain, free to read online

Diary of Gaspar de Portola during the California Expedition of 1769⁠–⁠1770, Gaspar de Portola, edited by Donald E. Smith and Frederick J. Teggart (1909)

The Portola Expedition of 1769⁠–⁠1770: Diary of Vicente Vila, Vicente Vila, edited by Robert Selden Rose (1911)

The Official Account of the Portola Expedition of 1769⁠–⁠1770, Official report of the expedition (1909)

History of San Mateo County, California, B. F. Alley (publisher) (1883)

The Discovery of San Francisco Bay: The Portola Expedition of 1769⁠–⁠1770, the Diary of Miguel Costanso, in Spanish and English, Miguel Costanso (1992) — borrow it from the Internet Archive